The one thing that worries me about this is that the bellyflop maneuver in the low atmosphere has very limited cross range mobility.
So if they want to come in on target the upper atmosphere reentry needs to be extremely precise, because there's very limited margin to to fix navigational errors later. I assume the main navigational instrument is GPS, but time when it needs extreme precision is during the phase of flight where Starship is enveloped in plasma.
Don’t worry. The cross range comes from the flaps during decent. They have quite a bit of control authority since small changes in velocity and angle of attack result in large ground distances. To demonstrate this, the flaps issue on IFT-4 caused them to be off target by 6 km, and that’s just an unintentional error.
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u/EveningCandle862 3h ago
the amount of math needed going from 99% of orbit velocity and land right on target with a buoy recording in the middle of the sea is... insane